#2 White Out Tape
Jan 14th, 2009 by pfi
Ever received a birthday card that was whited out and then written over again? You have an accountant friend.
White out, along with other tools such as calculators, rulers, and binder tabs (all stuff for future posts) are key staples of the accountant trade. Accountants tend to write with specific colored pens, and rely on white-out when they make mistakes. Either that or reprint the ream of workpapers. (Both happen a lot.)
Amongst accountants, white out is considered an art. Experienced accountants have a greater level of skill when it comes to whiting out specific numbers in tiny text or the little area between boxes. The less experienced accountants have to rely on whiting out the whole section and then recreating it by hand.
You can use this to your advantage by having spare white out available. To an accountant, this says that you are a person that they can count on in their times of need.
[…] systems, while intended to be straightforward, often change over time, and you will frequently find white out where workpaper references […]
Why does it list from #11 to #2, is that to drive us accountants nuts?
Michelle, Oh M Geee are you serious?? look at older posts…Note to author please work on your witty banter, if you are going to post these sort of things for the non accountant to see. (You are making it seem tooooo serious and lame) geeze
i prefer coloured pencils and rubbers. i’d choose my usb 10 key pad over the whiteout tape. everyone always asks why i have a 10 key attached to my laptop. it’s the perfect mate to the excel spreadsheet.
hilarious, i’ve totally used white out tape to fix a mistake in a bday card…to another accountant of course who appreciated the fine workmanship.
i agree with skipadoo about the 10 key…i’d put that at #2 over white out, but where the heck is the crackberry? how did the person who put this together forget about the blackberry attached to us at all times?
Of course not, the person who posted this clearly is a staffer, who is probably not “privileged enough” to be allowed the beloved crackberry. Staffers are required to keep their laptops on 24/7 instead…and when they don’t respond to requests of managers who have the crackberry, well, refer to #9 for details.
Those with the beloved crackberries, How many of you have been working until all hours and waiting for a response from a staff or senior and have thought about sending the “I know you saw my email. I know you have a crackberry” email.
I think a post needs to be done on the over-sized calculator. Despite loving Excel, all accountants have a gigantic calculator that only performs the most basic operations, but is oh-so-handy.
white out tape on capital gain/loss detail attachment, CORRECT basis numbers typed in, note to processing “pls copy rtns”.
White out? Huh? Go paperless, dude… I can barely remember what white out is!
Would you be impressed if I told you I can white out stuff on a PDF document?
[…] Ever received a birthday card that was whited out and then written over again? You have an accountant friend. White out, along with other tools such as calculators, rulers, and binder tabs (all stuff for future posts) are key staples of the accountant trade. (HT) […]